The moment he set down the scepter, a blue Ice Crown settled upon Volos’s head. The ice and snow on the ground, still not dissolved, seemed to resonate with him, congratting their master on his birth.


    "It seems you do not intend to directly integrate it into your body."


    After waiting a little while longer, until the Ice Crown had fully stabilized, Eros couldn’t help but speak.


    Due to their special identities, the formation of the Ice Crown encountered no difficulties, which was precisely why the task was left to the two of them. And indeed, the result turned out just as expected.


    "There is no need. Integrating it would only contaminate my pure origin. The separate seasons themselves are not a formidable Godhood, if not for their cycle itself, I would hardly take any interest in it."


    Volos slowly opened his eyes and released his right hand.


    The Scepter of Wealth slipped from the palm, dropping straight to the ground, sinking into the soil, and then vanished without a trace.


    It likely returned to its master, but Volos did not feel any loss. The only use that the Divine Artifact had for him had alreadye to an end, and he did not n to keep it in hand any longer.


    "Let’s go, it’s time to return."


    Touching the top of his head, which was a bit ufortable, Volos still wasn’t ustomed to suddenly having such a cold object. He intended toter leave it in the fourthyer of the Spirit Realm and let it participate in the cycle of the seasons by itself.


    As for the two of them... The recently born twins were still filled with curiosity about this world. They had already agreed to explore this world in their own way afterwards.


    "Well, let’s go back then."


    Nodding in agreement, Eros did not object.


    Before leaving, she nced towards the northeast, where the city of Eryxisy.


    A thousand yearster, or perhaps two thousand, she nned to go there and see what kind of legends the King, Prince, Queen, and Goddess had left for the humans toe.


    ...


    Spirit Realm, fifthyer.


    The vast interface was as deste as ever, and at the most central ce, the opposing interfaces of positive and negative energy were still producing conflict and division.


    Since ending the expedition to the Fantasy World some time ago, Laine had returned directly here, continuing to stabilize the cycles of these two inner realms. Although he was still indispensable here, as time passed, he needed to spend less and less effort on it.


    Therefore, in his free time, much like before, Laine naturally devoted his spare moments to other pursuits.


    Localization improvement of the Rune Scriptures was one aspect; he had even tried toplete a part of it, only to be unsatisfied and start over again. However, this time, due to the exploration of Zeus’s memories, he gained two additional topics.


    The first goes without saying, ever since obtaining the manifestation of the Creation Force, exploring its form of existence and understanding how to use it more skillfully became one of Laine’s most pressing concerns—yet this was even more difficult than improving the runes.


    Facing this nearly omnipotent force, he was like confronting the immortal nature of a deity; although he could use it, he had not gained greater understanding of it.


    Therefore, after his attempts bore no fruit, Laine decisively set it aside for the time being. Perhaps, just as he needed to attain great Divine Power to carry the mighty symbol, only by reaching the realm of Tartarus or even the dawn of Gaia’s birth could he truly understand the mysteries of the creation realm.


    Byparison, another topic seemed not so lofty. The ritual of Zeus, although profound, was something that Laine could deconstruct andprehend. This method of constructing symbols through special means was like a primer, opening up Laine’s thought processes considerably.


    If symbols could be constructed in such a way, then perhaps the more fundamental authority could be, too. However, the foundation that authority itself could be was a cornerstone for constructing symbols, Laine couldn’t think of what could serve as the foundation of authority just yet.


    Faith was out of the question; it was too easily changed—


    n/?/vel/b//jn dot c//om


    "There are exceptions, however, those faiths that are not born of worship and sacrifice, those that have continuously arisen from the past of civilization, are constant," he mumbled.


    "But such power... it still doesn’t seem quite suitable to be utilized by mortals. To touch upon faith before reaching the domain of a God might not be a good thing," he added.


    After some thought, Laine finally shook his head.


    If there ever came a day when he would venture to try himself, he wouldpletely and thoroughly strip himself of his humanity, leaving no connection between it and his essence, for any connection, however slight, would make it easier for others to detect the link between this special incarnation and himself, and would likely create vulnerabilities in his ’path to godhood.’


    If he relied on his own traits as a deity to exempt some of the difficulties on the road to godhood, it meant that his understanding of that stage would remain nk. His desire to retrace the long steps to godhood was to fill all the ’nks,’ to fully understand from the origin the foundation of his existence; naturally, he wouldn’t think of cutting corners before even starting.


    "It’s still quite difficult... but that’s to be expected," he sighed.


    "I hope to reach a conclusion before this epoch ends—no, a conclusion must be reached before this epoch can end," he resolved.


    With a calm expression, Laine lightly tapped his fingers, and a peculiar formation with twelve vertices appeared once again in front of him in the void.


    The ritual of Zeus was based on the position of the Divine King, mere imitation wouldn’t be effective, so Laine had been trying to modify its form to make it seem more useful.


    Initially, he chose to modify the moreplete part, the one perfected by the world Law; however, Laine soon discovered that this version was too deeply integrated with the current world. Although it seemed stronger, many aspects were actually not conducive to his changes.


    Therefore, he quickly switched his target and took out the original version of the ritual used by the primeval Zeus.


    In this rougher version of the ritual, both the Divine King and Queen of Gods were among the Principal Gods, but Laine noticed the differences because, in this version of the ritual, the actual Principal God was ’Zeus of Thunder’ rather than ’King Zeus.’


    This effectively avoided the problem of an imbnce in power among the twelve pirs of the primeval ritual—of course, the problem still existed, but it was exempted to some extent.


    And the presence of the Queen of Gods was no longer special in this ritual. Hence, in the end, Laine simply gleaned a seemingly useless and strange ritual from it.


    "A sealing technique..." he pondered.


    "A core, twelve nodes, which can operate positively, allowing the nodes to supply power to the core, or negatively, extracting the core’s power by the twelve nodes, turning it into a barrier sealing itself... But what do I need it for?" he wondered.


    The corners of his mouth twitched slightly as Laine himself couldn’t figure out where to apply this ritual—fortunately, like this ritual whose purpose was still unknown, he had many others.


    For instance, there was the poison from Odin’s vault, and also the shattered stele, which to this day, he had not managed to analyze for use.